The proposed research will increase our understanding of age differences in basic cognitive processes that are fundamental to language and memory. The experiments test two accounts of cognitive aging that postulate age decrements in specific processes. Under the Transmission Deficit hypothesis, age weakens connections among representational units in memory, thereby reducing the transmission of priming. Under the Inhibition Deficit hypothesis, age reduces the efficiency of inhibitory processes that suppress irrelevant information. We test contrasting predictions of these hypotheses for age deficits in spoken and written language production. The long-term goal is to contribute to the development of theories of aging that apply to a broad spectrum of cognitive performance, and that are sufficiently well specified to make testable predictions. A related goal is to identify the specific mechanisms underlying increased failures in phonological and orthographic retrieval in old age. The research focuses on cognitive problems that older adults report as their most frequent and most troubling, for example, tip of the tongue states (TOTS) and forgetting proper names, and it identifies conditions that either exacerbate or reduce these problems. Five sets of experiments are proposed. Experiments 1-4 use a phonological priming technique to test whether aging causes selective decrements in phonological retrieval processes involved in word production. Experiments 5-7 investigate the locus of age-related difficulty in retrieving proper names by comparing retrieval of names that are low vs. high frequency phonological forms (e.g., [Bill] Cosby vs. [Doris] Day, respectively). Experiments 8-9 use a "competitor priming" paradigm to evaluate whether inhibition deficits impair older adults naming of pictures of famous actors dressed as famous characters (James Bond-Sean Connery), so that two names compete for production. Experiments 10-12 examine a common mechanism for age-related increases in TOTs and spelling errors by determining whether they are correlated, and whether spelling is improved by prior processing designed to eliminate transmission deficits. Experiments 13a and 13b investigate why off-topic speech increases in old age and why, despite this, older adults narratives are rated more positively.